Hello,
I'm new to the game, and playing through a 2.6-dev campaign at the moment - it's very good, so thanks to all involved. I'm quite near the start I think (July... obviously I don't know when the end is yet, so it's hard to be certain
), but I have noticed an exploit / wrinkle in the encumbrance system.
This is the background:
http://ufoai.org/wiki/Talk:Proposals/Strength,_Weight_and_EquipmentI use a lot of submachine guns as secondary weapons for my units with poor RF characteristics - snipers and explosives at this stage. SMGs are two handed weapons, which often means moving your soldier to where you want them, dropping their slow weapon on the floor, getting the SMG out and switching on RF. Next turn you put your SMG back in its holster, pick up your primary weapon and carry on (this whole dance costs around 8 TUs).
If this happens to drop you below the 'bonus' threshold of 20% max weight, you will be given ~twelve extra TUs per turn, and perversely you will move slightly faster. If you didn't get the secondary weapon out, the cost would go down to 4 TUs / turn, making this an exploit worth fixing IMO.
It seems to me if you recalculated the TU bonus / penalty as a percentage of remaining available TUs every time the character picked something up or dropped something, it would work better.
So for example if the character starts the turn with 32 TUs and their primary weapon on the floor, and they are below the 20% weight threshold, they gain 33% TUs for 43 total. If they pick the weapon up, the cost of picking up the weapon is deducted, the weight is recalculated to be over the threshold, and they lose the bonus (43 - 3 / 1.33 = 30). If they then move 20 TUs and drop the weapon again (9 remaining TUs), the weight is recalculated and they receive the 33% bonus for 12 remaining TUs.
I think (hope?) that makes sense... (though I guess you'd have to think carefully about rounding).
Cheers.
[edit - fixing figures]
